One of my church pastors asked me to make the church a banner for an area wide celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation toward the end of October. Another pastor asked my friend Anita Born, who is an artist, to make the banner. The funny thing is that I am teaching Anita to make baby quilts and wall quilts and we get together frequently, so on Tuesday, we discovered that we had both been asked to make the banner. So we did what any reasonable friends would do, decided to do it together. We had both drawn up some concepts for the banner. I had just decided that mine was too formal, and would probably take too long, for this particular kind of celebration and I should probably start over and maybe have some trumpets on the banner when I found out she had also been asked to do the banner. So here is what I designed at first:

My original design for the reformation banner…too formal and too complex.

So when Anita came over on Tuesday for our usual Tuesday afternoons together, she brought several drawings and one of them had trumpets! Here is her original drawing:

Anita’s original drawing

So we worked over the design a bit. She came back yesterday and we finalized our design concept and I redrew it a bit in my drawing software and we decided how we were going to make this. Below is the design we came up with and I just got the fabric. Anita is going to paint us some trumpet appliques and do most of the handwork, and I am going to embroider the words in my Bernina 830 LE (Gibbs). and we are going to do the applique cutting and placing together. We decided, after talking with our pastors, that we should put the “Reformation 500, 1517 – 2017” text on a removable text box applique so we can change the text and use it in other ways for the church…something celebratory.

Here is the final design concept. The green ferns will be made from multiple greens and placed in small sections on the banner, so may look different when finished.

We are having a lot of fun doing this together and it will speed up the project a lot. I’m so glad we found out about both being asked before we got two banners made! I’ll post more on this project as we go. I need to get back to work now.

Sew happy everyone! Have a wonderful weekend and week. Find a friend to do some creative things together.

Wow! This has been a full week. First of all, I heard my quilt Pendragon had won something at AQS Paducah. It turned out it is Third Place in Small Wall Embellishment category. Now, it started out Honorable Mention but the first place winner moved up to one of the top big-money prizes…and it is a beautiful quilt…sew Pendragon moved up to Third Place, which is totally delightful.

Photo at AQS Fall Paducah with ribbon by Mary Owens.

Then I heard that Drawing Nigh had won Honorable Mention in small wall quilts at Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza (PNQE).

Drawing Nigh at PNQE with Ribbon. Photo by Lisa Calle.

I have to say, I really liked the judging at PNQE this year. Some of my favorite quilts by some of my quilty friends won top honors. Including Deb Levy’s Atomic Synergy, which was Best of Show,

Deb Levy’s Atomic Synergy at PNQE with ribbon. I’m not quite sure who took this picture.

and Lisa Calle’s A Silver Lining, which won Best Wall Quilt.

Lisa Calle’s A Silver Lining. Picture by Lisa Calle

Upcoming: Sew Pendragon will also be at AQS Des Moines, Oct 4-7, in case you are going and want to see it. I also have Spiral Galaxy Number 3 that will be at MQX Midwest in Springfield, Illinois Sept 27-30. Right now, I’m working on a new show quilt, a vest and matching tote bag for me, and my books. I also feel I need to get going on a couple of new quilts because I have plans and they have deadlines.

But amid all this delightful news about my own work, my son David’s new book The Merrimack Event, is bouncing around the top 500 of Amazon Kindles overall books and is currently about 50th in the overall Science Fiction on Amazon. It looks to be a winner! If you haven’t gotten yours yet you can find it here by clicking on the picture:

The Merrimack Event

Or you can wait another week or two and get a print copy, which isn’t out yet, but I’ll let you know about it.

Now that things might be getting back to normal this coming week, I will try and talk next weekend about how to take a piece of art you like and turn it, or something that inspires you from it, into a wall art quilt…or something else more fun.

Sew happy everyone! May you have some delightful times in your own life. Blessings!

We had a lot of excitement in my family this week. My youngest son David A. Tatum published his fourth novel. it’s always a wonderful thing when a new book gets published around here. He has his own small publishing company Fennec Fox Press, and he has assured me that he will publish my quilting books through Fennec Fox also. His other three books are Fantasy and are wonderful. This book is his first space opera book and is also a wonderful fun book to read. He hired a wonderful cover artist Joel Christopher Payne, that I talked about in my last blog. He’s the same artist I bought the rights on one of his paintings to use as inspiration for a new show quilt, and no, it isn’t the same picture. Here’s the new book cover. You can click on it and it will take you to the Kindle version in Amazon. The print version is not yet out, but it will be in a few weeks from now. That takes more time.

The Merrimack Event

If you want to help a wonderful man, my son David, I would love to have you buy a copy and once you have enjoyed reading it, for I am sure you will, I ask wholeheartedly for you to go to the Amazon site and write a small review, giving it the highest number of stars you feel you can. It doesn’t have to be long…even a single sentence is enough, but the better review you can truthfully provide, the better off he will be. He has put a lot of himself in his writing and it is good and getting better all the time. His writing is his career…he is a novelist. Reviews are so important, especially in the early days after publishing. The only money he makes is from the sales of his books, and getting people to discover his work (even know they are there) is the singly hardest thing to do in the publishing world. His work is really wonderful, and I say that from a reader’s perspective, not a mom’s. If you don’t believe me, buy a book and read it and see what you think. LOL You can see his earlier books all have 4 plus star ratings, and Amazon won’t let me write one–I’m too close to the author. This one is so new it has no ratings at this time. Or wait until the print copy comes out and buy it just because you love the cover art…isn’t it fabulous? It calls out “buy me”, “buy me”….LOL

My last blog was about Joel Payne’s art that I purchased and I have already made considerable progress getting this project up and running. I usually spend three to six months designing my own quilt. This year I am making three quilts that the art work is already done for me—Joel’s painting, my oldest son Ken is drawing a followup to Pendragon, and then a deep space quilt based on some NASA photos. This means I can jump right in and start making the patterns, putting me months ahead for the 2018 show season.

Yesterday I took a little time out and cut out a reversible vest and a matching quilted tote bag. The vest will have embroidery on it that I am using from the collection that came with Gibbs, my Bernina 830 LE, that I have never used. It’s flower designs for the front and the back. I am using different designs for each front and back, but they are all from the same collection. I always need a project that isn’t very stressful to work on when I am making a show quilt so I can go work on that when I get stressed out over my show quilt. It’s a nice system and it works. Plus, I get some clothes or bags or presents for friends and family out of it. Sometimes it’s another quilt.

OK, next week I will write up my instructions for making a pattern from a painting or photograph. So look around and find what you would like to use and I’ll tell you how I do this. If you have either Adobe photoshop, Corel Draw, Bernina design software, or some other drawing or photo editing software, that’s what I use.

Sew happy everyone! Let’s each make something for those in Houston or Louisiana impacted by the hurricane…cuddle quilts, pillow cases, tote bags…or make a contribution of funds, or even both. Look around for a good organization to send them through. I’m going to use Jenny Byer’s studio which is not too far from here. She is collecting quilts.

As I’ve said before, I really love my Bernina Q20, Fritz, that I have set up as a sitdown longarm. I belong to a couple of Facebook groups, and one in particular, for sharing things about this machine. I decided I would write a blog (with a bit of humility and a lot of experimenting behind me) about how I set my machine up for quilting, because there are a lot of new quilters out there with this machine who seem to have a lot of questions. Please understand this is how I work best with MY machine, but I thought it might still be of some value to the newer Q20 owners anyway.

Just so we are all singing from the same page, I have attached a pdf of the manual for reference:

To me, the greatest thing about this is how much control I have of the stitching. There are quite a few things that make an impact on that…the thread, the needle, the bobbin thread, the bobbin setup, and all the neat settings provided on the machine, and then there is the wonderful kickstart. If you haven’t done the upgrade and don’t yet have your kickstart, I hope you will do so right away.

I had my machine for about a month before I realized it has programs where you can set up all your top tensions, speeds, and stitch lengths for all the modes and save it (see pages 73-74). I have mine programed for different weights of threads. 40 wt polyester, 100 wt silk, and 12 weight cotton. The fourth one is the default settings, so really there are only three you can set and save, but that seems enough to me. I felt pretty dumb when I found this out, because I was resetting everything every time I turned it on. I have worked out a chart of settings for my own use, so I thought I’d share. First see pages 29-31 in the manual for a discussion of how they see threads and needles, then see my personal preferences chart

I have all the attachments available for the Q20, but there aren’t many (thank goodness). I already had the feet that work with my Q20 (see page 22 in the manual), mostly because I collected them while I was learning to FMQ on my Bernina 830 LE, and they fit. I even have the double needle stitch plate (see page 46 through 49 for threading for double needle stitching) and the horizontal spool pin necessary for straight wound spools (see page 23).

One of my many practice pieces. This one shows different thread weights and a little bit of yarn couching.

Do I use the BSRs?

Yes, I do use my BSRs and love them (read pages 75-78 for a discussion of the various BSR modes). I have the BSR attachment for my 830 LE, but it is slow and a little cumbersome compared to the fabulous BSRs on the Q20. I use BSR1 for most of my free motion, BSR2 for my ruler work, and manual sometimes for really tiny tiny fmq and some special threadwork, and even if I spray baste a quilt, I thread baste it with BSR 3..so fast, so handy, gives that little bit of extra security. After years of using a BSR on my Bernina 830LE and now my Q20, I find the manual comes pretty naturally, but I still prefer the BSRs for most things.

It is true that good results from the various modes take practice both to learn what YOU like and to get the best benefits from the different modes. I think, in fact, that you need to practice as if you are learning a musical instrument…frequently and for at least a half hour at a time, and every now and then a long period of practice. I periodically make a bunch of 20 inch or so practice sandwiches…marking some with grids, some with stencils, and nothing on some. I use solid colors for the practice sandwich tops so I can really see what I’m doing, but it’s a good way to use up that ugly fabric you wonder why you ever bought on the back of your practice sandwiches, and I use joined pieces of leftover batting for my practice sandwiches too.

The kickstart lets you stitch without your foot on the pedal, but is very easy to start, pause, and stop. By doing this, you don’t have an uneven feed of power going to the stitching. Here’s their guide addendum for the manual for the kickstart:

When using just the pedal to make it go, it is unlike a regular sewing machine, or the gas pedal on your car. The pedal on the Q20 sitdown does not make the stitching go faster or slower. The pedal is on or off. Pushed down all the way, you get it fully on. Slightly up, sometimes it skips stitches. If your foot slips off your pedal or you lose concentration, it makes it skip or unevenly stitch. Without the kickstart you have to spend part of your concentrated effort making sure you have that pedal fully and evenly compressed all the time you are stitching. So the kickstart is absolutely the most even way to stitch because it is on at full power, paused, or stopped. It may sound a little intimidating to think of turning on the stitching all the time, but you really are still in complete control. You can still kickstart the pedal and make it pause, or you can press the front of the pedal to exit the kickstart program instantly. I hope you will try it if you haven’t already.

Here are some rulers I used to stitch this border piece (stitched, painted, then pieced into the top, then quilted with monopoly and 100 wt silk)

This spiral galaxy quilt is a whole cloth quilt stitched in its entirety on my Q20 (except for the binding and rod pocket, of course).

Sew with all these settings in mind, I hope you will find your own personal settings…make a chart yourself if you want…and then find that working with your Q20 is just as wonderful as I have.

I think I’m a little nuts. I spotted a picture that I thought would make a fabulous quilt. It just seems magical and it’s by Joel Christopher Payne, a really wonderful artist. So, since we have been FB friends for a while, I really just wanted to tell him how much I liked his piece and, unable to keep my trap shut about it, I mentioned how I thought it would make a great design inspiration for an art quilt. And, just curious, you see, I asked if he ever gave or sold permission to use his art in such a way.

He told me he had never considered the idea, and that he had a standard price for the rights to most of his work and mentioned what it was. I told him that was probably appropriate, but my little micro-business could not manage that. Well, he then wanted to know what I would do with it, and I explained a little more and he asked for pictures of my work. I provided a link to my website so he could see some.

In the end, he came substantially down on the price for the rights to his piece, since I was only going to use it one time for a quilt, and also, I think he was a little intrigued by the idea. He came down enough that I felt it would be well worth it, and so, I now have a new quilt project for an exciting piece.

Yesterday, he sent me the permission and a high-res jpg and I spent most of the day analyzing the colors and figuring out how I would approach this project. I made a little guide with the colors, using my various drawing softwares so I could hunt for the appropriate fabrics.

I had fun this afternoon pulling out fabrics from my stash and have found that I have what I believe to be all the right fabrics, colors, and even a rather large collection of wood-print fabrics (there is a fair amount of wood in the picture), which will require piecing and shading with inks or fabric crayons to make it work.

I just restocked my battings last week, and I even have a piece I can use for the backing. We all know my thread collection is taking over my fabric stash…so there you are.

Let the fun begin! (Sorry, I am not going to be able to share pictures until the project is complete). My goal is to complete it by June to enter it into AQS Virginia Beach 2018. I have two other show quilts in the works too. Exciting time in the old studio.

Sew happy everyone! NEVER use someones art for your design inspiration that you don’t ask first. Sometimes it works, sometimes you just have to walk away and find something else. This is important.

Take care all of you folks caught in the horrible storm and floods. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Wow! This week with the eclipse and spending that time with my 14 year-old grandson Kevin was soooo special! We had eighty-five percent of the eclipse in a pure clear sky with the birds and the noisy cicadas in the woods behind us. His parents, who are serious astronomy hobbyists, headed down to Tennessee to get in a total eclipse area, but he did not want to spend that long in the car. The traffic for them was aweful and they had to spend an extra night in a motel on the way home, so he clearly made the right choice for him and it gave me and his uncle David a real special time together with Kevin even though it was not total here. I am told Ken got some photos to process of the eclipse. I am looking forward to seeing them.

This comes at an interesting time in my quilting life, because I am trying to line up a couple of new deep space quilts to fill out my space series inspired by the fabulous photos found in the NASA gallery. The pictures have to be copyright free for me. I have tried a couple of times to get in touch with the astronomers whose pictures NASA sometimes shows that are copyrighted and they simply ignore my inquiries. But there are many many magnificent copyright free photos available to use for the basis of new quilts. I will probably also include a couple of space quilts that may use other techniques inspired by Ken’s (oldest son, Kevin’s Dad) and Beth’s (his wife) photography and ideas. I am planning on writing about making space quilts and including all of these in the book. This will probably be a part of my ongoing project of Art Quilt Basics: Surface Design and Embellishment that I hope to get published this year. These quilts are practically all surface design and embellishment with organic, but well planned, quilting. They are very hard to photograph because of all the light reflection, but I leave that to Ken, who does a credible job on it.

So I am currently on the hunt for my next deep space quilt photo inspirations. If you have a favorite, let me know in a comment but do it soon, because I’m going to start working on this next space quilt very soon. 😄

I hope you are all having fun with your art, sewing, or quilting. I’m busy drawing up a couple of new ideas and making sampler quiltlets to include in my book project Art Quilt Basics: Machine Quilting for Art Quilters (this book starts with the very basics for machine quilting (both feed dogs up and free motion) and moves through the process ending with a discussion and ideas specific for art quilters.

Sew happy everyone! Make yourselves a stack of small quilt sandwiches and play. You’ll be surprised how much fun it is…use all your machines. You will benefit by improving your skills and having a lot of fun too. Cheers.

While I began finally to recover from a bear of a cold–and yes, I am back from the coughing, sneezing, nose-dripping, energy sapping two week long cold finally–I decided to do something kind of fun and gentle that someone else did most of the thinking for me. So I finally got around to making bag 1 of Rami Kim’s IQUILT online class. It is entirely made from scraps in my stash. Even the zipper was something I must have bought nearly a decade ago just for this bag, but I didn’t know it then. LOL. The picture at the top is one side. I really love it. I added a couple of pockets in the lining that she didn’t have. I like it so much I think I will use it for my primary bag for a while.

It was a lot of fun, even though I made a lot of mistakes that had to be corrected. I made the top piece, which is cut in two pieces for both sides. First you quilt a 14 x 22 inch piece and then you cut out the corners and cut it into half for the zipper. I cut one corner too big! 😒 So I had to make another top piece. I had originally used a darker gray, but since I used it up in the first piece, I hunted around and found a similar piece with the same kind of print but it was a lighter gray. Then I cut the bottom piece of lining in two, like you were supposed to do for the top, but not for the bottom, so I rejoined it with the leftover piece of folded strip like the one that you use down one side of the folded Chotsky ribbons. But in the end, I think it came out really nice. Here’s the other side.

In the past, when I made a bag (and I’ve made quite a few over the years), I was never really happy with the handles. Rami suggests leather handles for the bags, and they solve a multitude of problems. I went on a hunt for them, and finally found that Amazon sells them in multiple styles and colors and they aren’t expensive. So I ordered two pair…this gray one and a nice green one for a future bag totally from my stash. I have a couple of long multi-zippers in a roll from Nancy’s Notions that I can use for that one. This is so much fun it could get to be a habit. In the future, though, I hope I am faster and make fewer mistakes.

Sew happy everyone! Make yourself a bag. Hint: Be sure to build it right…interface the fabrics, put the right kind of stiff batting, and use the zipper a little longer than required to make it easier. Adding internal pockets is really easy…just make a lined square piece the right size (figure it out from your pattern, remembering where it will bend or be stitched) and stitch it on while the lining is still flat. Be sure to measure and center the pockets. You can even make a zipper pocket fairly easily. Maybe I’ll show you how in one of my future blogs if you want. I just made patch pockets for this bag and added a couple of lines of stitching to make a place for a pen and a notebook on one side and just left it with no divisions on the other side.

I haven’t got any real news for you this week, but I thought you might like to hear my musings about my books and a couple of ideas. I have had a bad cold all week and am beginning to feel better, but it took a lot of energy out of me, so I made almost no progress on anything recently.

Nevertheless, I have not been without some interesting ideas. About the only thing I did all last week was to reorganize my disorganized transcripts for art quilting into more directed and solid projects.

The first book (or is it books?) will be “Art Quilt Basics”, which will focus largely on design, applique, and quilting techniques to help the artist take the ideas floating around their heads and move them into finished wall art quilts. It will be short on design and long on construction techniques and quilting. The quilting section is nearly complete, and the applique section is well along the way. I need to make more samples. Once I get those completed, then I am hoping my son Ken, who does all my quilt photos, can help me get the photos well done, and my son David, who has his own independent publishing company, will help me get it published. Sew I am hopeful this will be complete by late fall just in time for Christmas.

The second book “Surface Design and Embellishment for Art Quilts: Sling That Bling” is basically an outline at this point with loads of concepts in small notes here and there, but I am going to use some of my already completed quilts for most of the pictures, necessitating only a few additional sample items.

Now I know there are lots of books out there about quilt making techniques and surface design and embellishment, but only a few of them seem to focus on realizing a piece of wall art in quilt form. I hope I can provide some original concepts and a place to look when you have an idea but don’t know how to get it from a great idea, or even a good design, to the finished project or need a reference for a technique you may have seen before but need instructions or refreshing.

Anyway, in addition to doing a lot of thinking and some limited work on my books, I have also been doing a lot of thinking about a couple of quilts I am going to make. One of them is to turn into a quilt this piece of fabric I painted digitally and had printed by FabricOnDemand.

I painted this one digitally in Corel Painter 17 and had it printed 28″ x 38″.

I bought some darker blue for the border, which I want to use as a base for an Art Nouveau style border. I have a concept now but I haven’t yet drawn it up. I hope I can get it drawn before the concept poufs away like a soap bubble popping…LOL. I think I can. I’m working on that today.

On Thursday a friend of mine and I are planning on attending Sacred Threads Quilt show, which is only about fifteen minutes from my home. I am excited about that.

I am going to take the second batch of my quilts out to G Street Fabrics in Rockville, Maryland, for the second part of the exhibit of my quilts. This exhibit, which runs from mid July until the end of August or so, includes nearly all my show quilts except for Pendragon, Dad’s House plan, this year’s Hoffman Challenge still on tour, and a couple I have sold or given away. They will be displayed throughout the store, including those that are already there in the Bernina department. I also have completed one new quilt and nearly finished a second new quilt just for this exhibit. Some of these quilts are available for purchase. I will (really) post photos of the exhibit sometime in the latter half of July.

Sew here is where I’m at on the preparations. I have completed the second one of my Alfred Shaheen panel quilts and named it “Tropical Garden”. I used a lot of Superior’s new 100 weight polyester thread called Microquilter on both that quilt and the “Field of FLowers” I hope to finish by Friday to include in the exhibit.

A Review of Microquilter Thread

When I won all thirty colors of Superior’s Microquilter 100 weight polyester from Superior Threads, I was really thrilled. I use almost more 100 weight threads than I do any other thread. I use it for background quilting, detail thread sketching on things like flowers and line drawings, and I also love it for machine applique. I do not use it for piecing or bobbins.

I found it a wonderful workable thread. I tried it in my Bernina Q20 sit down longarm, my Bernina 830 LE, and my Bernina 350. In every case I had to lower the top tension to keep it from breaking, just as I do for silk 100 wt and monopoly. It worked beautifully without further adjustment in everything but the Q20. For that, I had to lower the bobbin tension also (I used it with Bottom Line in the bobbin, though I did try one bobbin with the Microquilter). I found surprisingly that the Superior top stitch needle size 80 worked better than a smaller needle that I use for monopoly and silk. So here is how I ended up setting up my Q20 (Fritz) if you have one:

I have found my Q20 works better with a Magic Bobbin Genie sized for M bobbin. I just put it in over the spring in the bobbin. Without it, I have some thread nests on the bottom of my quilt when I get going really fast, and believe me, the Q20 can go REALLY fast.

I set the bobbin tension with Superior’s Bottom Line or the Microquilter itself for 180 using the tension guage that came with my machine. If you use the Microquilter in your bobbin don’t wind it full. It works better a little less…starting at about 3/4 full. In the course of making two quilts, I used both Bottom Line that I wound and some prewound Superior thread bobbins that use Bottom Line.

I set the top tension for 125

I used a size 80 Superior top stitch titanium needle.

I used BSR1 set at 280 speed for tiny little stippling and 200 for slower tiny bubbles

This setup makes it work like a dream…no nests, no hangups, no tension problems

I will provide some pictures of my quilting with Microquilter as soon as I get them taken. I am behind in getting my quilts photographed.

I got my little personal app quilt home that was a part of Road to California’s traveling exhibit of app quilts. It has lost about six hot fix crystals out of hundreds, so I need to replace them by Friday. I have one quilt that needs washing and reblocking, which I will do today. I have several more stumpwork butterflies to make for the Field of Flowers and I have to put the rod pocket and label on it. I think I can make the Friday deadline on this one, since the actual quilt is complete and bound. I even have the silver spider charm on the spider web part of that quilt. Here’s the dragonfly that is ready to go onto the quilt already. It’s in parts and needs a little additional embroidery after attachment where the wings attach to the body. I will do turned edge applique of the body and hide the wing wires under that. I will also probably darken the little white edges of the sheer to match the stitching. I may even do a hand blanket stitch over the edges if I decide it needs it. The first picture shows the pieces after stitching, and the second picture shows the dragonfly together ready to applique on.

The embroidered pieces, which I made in the hoop with my Bernina 830 LE

And I also need to ship “Pendragon” to AQS this week. I want to do a little gold paint touch up on the border paint before I ship it.

So I have a really busy week ahead of me, but it’s an exciting time. I am enormously pleased that G Street has asked me to show my quilts in the exhibit there. It is a real honor. I hope you have a chance to see it. The whole show will be available in mid-July. I’m not sure of the exact dates, so you might want to call them before you head there.

Believe it or not, I have completed all my projects I had going. Now that the workshop at G Street Fabrics is over (I will be repeating it in the fall), I am going to make two quilts centered around two digital printouts. I’m hoping to get one of them done by mid July for part two of my Exhibit at G Street Fabrics.

The field of flowers is a photograph by Beth Tatum, my daughter-in-law:

Photo by Beth Tatum, printed on fabric 36″ x 26″

The pink flowers I painted in Corel Painter 17 and had it printed.

I painted this one digitally in Corel Painter 17 and had it printed 28″ x 38″.

They came out really wonderful, and I washed them in Synthrapol, rinsing until they ran clear. There wasn’t much color in the first batch of water and I can’t see any color loss. So now I can use them in a quilt I will soak when the quilting is complete, which makes marking things and blocking a lot easier. I’ll have some embellishments I will add after blocking.

I plan on just sandwiching and quilting the field of flowers photo with a variety of threads for depth and interest and adding beadwork and some 3D embroidered butterflies. I might face it instead of binding it.

I plan on adding a double border on the pink flowers. The inner border will maybe be shaped and appliqued on. I plan on shortening the flower panel at the top to bring the border down to the vine, and cutting out the top half of the leaves that would be hidden by the border to have them break into the border. Then I will quilt it with some pictographic flowers, vines, and creatures, also quilting in the flower and leaf textures. I also am working on designing two or three 3d stumpwork with wire of small birds in
Bernina V7 software to applique on. This is my bigger project, as you might imagine. If this turns out well, this might be a show quilt, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, I have broken down my housecleaning project into small manageable sections and am spreading them out across a couple of weeks. I did pretty well with this so far. My upper level is mostly clean, though I have a plan to go through my stash at some point, eliminating some things and slightly reorganizing the fabrics so they all fit back into my storage units. I’ll do this later, after the mid-July deadline for the second part of my G Street Fabrics exhibit. I’ll do the main level next week, and David will do his level too (he has a nice “flat” on the walkout lower level that includes his bedroom/office and a nice big living area with his own back deck. There is a bathroom area that has the rough in plumbing, but I haven’t gotten it finished yet. Maybe if he has a big hit book, he will do that himself.).

A word about digital fabric art: It is NOT “cheating” as some quilters seem to think. For example, it took me s lot of time to paint the pink flowers, and they are fully my own artwork. Why would that be any less of a “legitimate” quilt than a whole cloth, for instance? Neither would a photograph that is printed, sandwiched, and quilted as a whole cloth. I do think there is slightly greater acceptance of the value of digitally printed fabrics than there used to be. And that is good. Indeed, am hopeful some of the heated rhetoric about just about everything these days will cool off. Let’s appreciate one another and their work…traditional, contemporary, modern, and art quilters, white collar and blue collar workers, sharing their Mom’s house while writing wonderful stories for the world to enjoy, making art quilts, plumbing the kitchen, powerwashing your home, managing a business, Democrat, Republican, Independent…cool it everyone. Life can be wonderful and full of peace and love if we stop the arrogance and heated rhetoric and take a step back to love and appreciation that we are not all-knowing.

Sew happy everyone! Try your hand at making some digital fabric art if you haven’t tried it yet. I’ll post more on these projects along the way. Also, I have decided to put the landscape project I tried to start as a kind of block of the month on the backburner. It needs more definition, and everyone that responded said they were too busy. I think I am too busy too…LOL.